Review of The Fallen By Watchbird Album by Jane Weaver
The Fallen By Watch Bird really shouldn't be very good, for several reasons. For a start, it's a concept album based around a fantastical/ridiculous tale of magic, romance and death. There's two lovers, you see, and they communicate using birds, and one of them gets shipwrecked, and then...well, the story's a bit silly. When you factor in Weaver's reliance upon obscure guest stars (Wendy and Bonnie, anyone?) and a press release citing the album's chief influences as 'Eastern European children's cinema, Germanic Kunstm"rchen, 70's television music and early murmers of 80's synth pop', you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's almost certainly a precious, pretentious mess. Against the odds, though, Weaver has succeeded in creating something which is more than the sum of its parts, a half-decent folk record which, at its best, possesses an otherworldly charm.
The album is strongest when it sounds strangest. Its opening songs, for example, succeed because they conjure up a beguilingly weird atmosphere, primarily through the liberal use of droning synth noise. 'Europium Alluminate' and 'A Circle and a Star' play on the contrast between this drone and Weaver's pretty plucking; they sound (to drop a pretentious name of my own) a little like the outre folk of Finnish singer Islaja. The title song picks up the pace slightly, but some ghostly backing vocals ensure that proceedings remain reassuringly odd. This opening suite of three tracks is the album's strongest stretch. What follows is more conventional, which is a mistake: stripped of its oddness, Weaver's music can sound pedestrian. Tracks like 'Turning In Circles' and 'Silver Chord' are momentarily diverting psyche-folk curiosities, but no more. During the record's second half Weaver sometimes seems so keen to fit in odd instruments and obscure guests that she forgets to find a place for songwriting.
The second half slump ensures that The Fallen By Watch Bird isn't an especially essential listen, but there's enough here to warrant purchase if you happen to be a devoted fan of psychedelic folk music. In the circumstances, this is something of a minor triumph; a record that could have been a dreadful pretentious mess, isn't. Despite this, though, one is with the strange impression that if the album's second half did sound a little more like seventies television music and eighties pop, and a little less like uninspired psychedelic folk, the results would have at least been somewhat more interesting.
Nick Gale
